Early One Morning (4 page)

‘Older brother,’ corrected Robert, poking Maurice in the ribs.

‘Just a second,’ said Maurice. Maurice arranged himself on the side of the car and there was a flash and detonation.

‘Now, can I get out?’ asked Robert.

Maurice moved out of the way and pushed the crowd back. Robert eased himself out of the cockpit and swung his legs out. As his feet hit the ground a powerful column of pain shot up his limbs, exploding in his cerebrum and expelling all consciousness as he slumped into his brother’s arms.

Williams had to repeat the trick of carrying the two women over the muddy field although now they were full of champagne it was rather trickier, as both kept wriggling.

‘Keep still. I might drop you, Miss,’ he said to Eve, trying not to think about the lithe body—or the rustling silk chemise—under the velvet dress.

‘And then Orpsie will sack you for sullying his little Evie. “Gee, honey,” he will say, “did Willie boy hurt my little peach?”’ She smiled and Williams wondered about letting her fall into the gloop anyway. The baby talk that Orpen affected was irritating at the best of times, but recently he had begun to sprinkle it with Americanisms. The constant stream of writers, journalists, negro dancers and jazz musicians appearing in Paris had made US slang the affectation of the year. There were rumoured to be fifty thousand Yanks in total, and they appeared to be in the habit of all turning up in the same place at the same time. The attraction was obvious—a devalued franc gave them twenty-five to a dollar, and the very idea of prohibition was anathema to the French.

Eventually both women were installed, more or less stain-free, in the rear of the car and Williams slammed the door on them. He started the engine, set the advance-retard, selected a higher gear than normal and eased the Rolls out of the muddy grooves it had settled into. Eve spoke in a loud voice, making sure it carried through to the driver’s compartment.

‘I’m sorry you didn’t get a man, Sylvie.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m going off them anyway. Present company excepted.’

They giggled and Williams glanced in the mirror to see if they were talking about him.

‘Oh, never with the staff, darling,’ insisted Eve, wrinkling her nose.

‘Why ever not?’

‘Because you never know where they have been.’

Williams had negotiated the worst of the mud and was easing on to the metalled section of the car park, now full of cars being cranked and pushed.

Eve continued in a yet louder voice. ‘He turned up six months ago. No references to speak of. Couldn’t use a knife and fork properly. Wasn’t even a very good driver—’

Williams floored the big beast and the giant engine responded with astonishing liveliness. The Rolls leapt forward, and Williams began to swerve through the crowd streaming out of the stadium, fishtailing as the wheels flicked up a spray of sharp stones. Eve and Sylvie fell together in a heap in the back, squealing with a mixture of fear and delight.

Clear of the people, Williams began to fling the machine harder, and there was another loud exclamation as limbs tangled and dresses rode up, to reveal elasticated silk garters. Williams glanced into the rear-view mirror as often as he dared. He managed to spin a one-eighty-degree turn and head for the exit when, from the corner of his eye, he saw the blur of blue bodywork and stamped on the brakes, rotating the wheel as hard as he could until the Rolls broadsided, two wheels lifting off the ground, leaving several tons of metal perched daintily on two tyres before it flopped back down and buried itself deep into the gravel.

The Citroën with the fold-back roof slowly pulled level. Williams recognised the driver, Maurice Benoist, and felt himself redden when he saw his brother in the passenger seat, two bandaged feet on the dashboard.

It was the latter who leaned across and wagged a finger at Williams. ‘Who do you think you are? Robert Benoist?’

The two brothers pulled away in an insulting spray of muck, their laughter caught by the slipstream and thrown back into Williams’ face.

P
ARIS
, A
PRIL
1928

C
HAUFFEURING, WILLIAMS HAD
decided soon after joining the Orpen household, wasn’t so much about being able to drive as being able to wait. The evening had begun with him waiting for Orpen and Eve to get ready, waiting while they picked up Jessop, the young American writer who was on his way south and had been so for more than a year, then waiting on the Champs Elysées near Fouquet’s while the trio had an early supper, then, swollen to a quartet by Raymond Berri, an industrialist who was after having his portrait painted by Orpen for his boardroom, waiting while they had taken in a show at the Bobino. Then they had completed the group by picking up yet another American, this one called George, from the Majestic.

Now Williams was killing time once more while they all drank Aquavit at Select among the crop-headed lesbians in their mannish
le smoking
suits who had struggled to keep their monocles in place as Eve swished by in her asymmetrical gold mesh dress with the deep v-neck line. Even Madame Select, as usual counting the cash in her fingerless gloves while her husband supervised the endless stream of welsh rarebits, had looked up from her arithmetic to see who was causing such a stir.

Orpen had imbibed prodigiously and from where he stood Williams could hear him on the terrace, seated as close as possible to the stove, buttonholing Barley, another young American sent abroad by his parents to gather a few rough edges. Orpen was doing his best to oblige.

‘So I was there when they brought her in. Beautiful she was. Eighteen. French. The Belgians were convinced she was a spy. They tried her, sentenced her to death by firing squad.’

‘And you saw her shot?’ asked Barley, his jaw almost on the table.

Williams could see that several women had joined the party, including Sylvie and a rather imposing woman who towered over her.

‘Had to. Official war artist. Orpsie saw some terrible things. Terrible. So she was asked if she had any last requests and the girl says, I would like to die in my mink coat. Okey-dokey, said the Belgian officer and it was delivered to her cell. Another round here. Yes, another set of drinks. So, come the morning, first light, she is led out to the execution wall, in her mink coat. Six Belgian soldiers stand there. The officer says, shoulder arms, take aim, all that, and just as they are about to fire she drops the mink coat off her shoulders.’ There was a pause while Orpen knocked back a drink ‘And there she was totally bloody naked as the day she was born.’

‘Gosh.’

‘Gosh indeed. That’s what we all said to ourselves. Gosh. Should’ve seen those Belgies’ rifles shake. End of the barrel going up and down like they had St Virus’s dance.’

‘What happened?’ asked Barley.

‘Happened? They shot her. She was a spy.’

Williams allowed himself a smirk. He had heard the story a dozen times, and knew it was pure fiction. Orpen had spun it round one of the first portraits of Eve he had executed of her in her late teens, when he caught her bare shouldered and innocent, with her curly blond hair falling on to that angelic skin. He had made the mistake of repeating the tale to someone at the War Office and a whole inquiry into the ungentlemanly conduct of the Belgians had been launched. Orpen was obliged to admit he created the whole story to up the value of the painting by a few thousand guineas.

Williams instinctively straightened his slouch as he saw the two-man police night patrol approach on cycles. These were the watchdogs of nocturnal Paris—Madame Select was famed for her readiness to summon them in the case of the slightest fracas—and were of a different order to most cops, seeming to consist mostly of rough, resentful Corsicans. Williams instinctively checked he had his identity card with him, but the pair cycled by, one of them even giving him a respectful nod, as if in workers’ solidarity.

Ten minutes after the end of the execution story the party were out, with Orpen in the vanguard, weaving as he approached, hanging on to Eve’s arm, his bulk forcing her to trace the same sinuous pattern on the pavement as him. ‘OK, Williams, we have to squeeze eight in now. Including Hettie there.’ He indicated the towering woman with the rice-powdered face at the rear of the group, a Lilly Dache cloche hat pulled down over her ears and a red squirrel fur coat. ‘The tallest transvestite in Paris. Off to the Jockey Bar. Apricot cocktails. Then
dancings.
And Barley here wants to try Chez Hibou.’

The group all guffawed and young Barley managed a good-sport grin, even though all had clearly neglected to mention that Chez Hibou, on rue St Apolline, was a leading licensed brothel, one, if the rumours and the portrait above the mantelpiece were to be believed, which once had regular, if anonymous, royal patronage in the form of Edward VII.

One of the party, though, made his excuses. ‘Thanks for the drinks and tall stories, Bill, but I gotta go.’

‘George,’ protested Orpen. ‘Come on. Be fun.’

‘I’ve got work to do.’

‘Work. Call that bloody awful racket you write work?’

George laughed good naturedly and adjusted his glasses. ‘Unless I do something I’ll be just like every other American in Paris. A bum.’

‘You can write as much of that jazzy stuff as you like, George. You’ll always be a bum to me.’

George smiled, waved a hand and disappeared in search of a cab. Orpen looked at Williams. ‘He thinks I’m joking. Have you heard his stuff? All right, off to Hibou.’

Williams sighed as he opened the door for Orpen. Heading for the discreet pink light of Chez Hibou meant more waiting, even though Orpen, Eve and the
travesti
would spend the time in the bar, paying for the naked girls to drink a harmless mixture of lemonade and grenadine while they sipped overpriced iced
mousseux
and tried to slip some into the
poules’
drinks whenever the eyes in the back of the fearsome Madame Hibou’s head blinked.

Williams looked the fresh-faced American up and down as he climbed in beside Eve, and noticed the slight nervous tremor in his hands, the moist upper lip. A dizzying mixture of more alcohol, dancing with the
tapettes
and
dinges
at Bal des Chiffoniers, then on to choose from the flesh rack at a brothel. Boy was out of his depth. Eve caught Williams’ eye and winked. Perhaps the wait wouldn’t be too long at Chez Hibou after all.

Williams had grown used to Orpen’s bouts of melancholy. Sometimes late into the evening when Eve was off with her own friends or visiting her father in Lille, Orpen would ring the bell and summon Williams with a bottle of Johnnie Walker or, if he was feeling homesick for Ireland, Jameson, and invite him to sit and chat in the living room in front of the fire.

Two nights after the Chez Hibou episode—when the Barley boy had finally figured out what was going on and fled, leaving the rest of them to go on to Bricktop’s and hear the flame-haired negress sing Cole Porter songs—Orpen did just that.

He was in his cardigan, worn as usual over a waistcoat in place of a jacket, shirt with bow tie, spectacles on the end of his nose, swirling the drink in his glass, when he asked a startling question. ‘How much d’you think I earned last year, Williams?’

Williams sipped at his own whiskey, eking it out. He was rarely offered a refill. ‘I have no idea, Sir William.’

Orpen sniffed. ‘Have a guess.’

‘I really—’

‘Have a guess, man, damn you.’

‘Twenty thousand.’

Orpen smiled. ‘Forty-six thousand, three hundred and ninety-four pounds.’

Williams raised a cautious eyebrow. ‘Very good, sir.’

‘Good? Bloody marvellous. And you know what?’

‘No?’

‘I’d give it all away if I could stop being a portrait painter. I hate bloody portraits. All little Orps gets to do is one pompous fool after another.’ He paused and considered this for a moment. ‘No, they are not all fools. Chamberlain I liked. Asquith, too. And Berri’s not a fool. Except he wants to pose with a falcon. Told him he’ll have to get his own. Get it stuffed. Not having a live falcon in here. Against the terms of the lease. No birds of prey in the house. Must say it somewhere.’ He winked just to underline the jest.

He handed a piece of paper across. ‘Look at this. Chaplin.’

Williams looked down at the drawing, a caricature of the Little Tramp, signed and dated. ‘Man comes to my studio …
my
studio, greatest portrait painter in Europe, the world. Comes to my studio and does his
own
fucking portrait. Ha.’

Orpen drained his glass and refilled. ‘Just three fingers, as the Yanks say. Forty-six thousand. I should be happy shouldn’t I? But look, my wife hates me. Mrs St George never writes to Orpsie boy now.’ This, Williams knew, was a former mistress, a longstanding affair that had soured some time ago. ‘And I hardly see my children. Have you heard Kit play? Bloody good pianist she is. I’ll get her to play for you when she comes over.’

Williams steeled himself for a long, slow ramble. Any minute now they were going to hit the how-life-should-have-been section, and this was open ended, a long improvisation on his woes. He snapped out of it, and even refreshed Williams’ drink—just the one finger he noticed—and said jauntily, ‘Forty-six thousand, eh? How about we go to Dieppe at the weekend and see if we can lose some of it?’

That night Eve lay in bed, listening to the tidal snoring of Orpen, a great nasal gush as air came into his tubes, a softer whistling as it ebbed. He had announced earlier in the evening that he would be heading off for London in a couple of months in time for his daughter Kit’s series of concert recitals. There was no mention of Eve accompanying him.

Which is just as well, as she probably wouldn’t have gone. The last time had been a disaster, as Orpen spent his time in male-only clubs and she searched in vain for some hint of levity in the grey, drizzly capital, so lifeless and buttoned-up after Paris. When they did go out together, Orpen’s fellow artists treated her as some kind of prize specimen, a lurid professional model and mistress like Kiki de Montparnasse, whose over-cooked memoirs they had all devoured.